Suddenly up all night nursing? Welcome to reverse cycling.

March 21, 2014

Have a consistently sleeping baby who suddenly wants to nurse all night?

It’s a common scenario for babies whose moms have returned to work, babies who are too busy or distracted to eat during the day, and teething babies. And it has a name: reverse cycling.

Why does reverse cycling happen? There is usually a reason. Babies want food, comfort, or both at night, often because they aren’t getting as much as they want or need during the day.

A typical case is a baby who doesn’t like to take a bottle at day care, who “sips” enough during the day to make it the reunion with her mom at the end of the workday - when the all night feast starts. Or a baby who is adjusting to having less frequent contact with his mom during the day now that she’s gone back to work, and so wants more comforting at night. Occasionally, it’s the mom who is so busy juggling multiple kids during the day that feedings are not frequent enough, or not long enough.

So if your baby is reverse cycling, what can you do?

First, identify a possible reason why he has adopted this pattern. Is he not eating enough during the day? Too distracted to eat much during waking hours?

Rei

It pisses me off that most of these articles about reverse cycling just refer you to the Kellymom page, which doesn’t actually offer much helpful advice for addressing it. The Kellymom page basically says as long as they are nursing at night everything is fine and dandy. There is not a single helpful article on reverse cycling that actually offers a hands on approach to resolving it. Thanks but no thanks for such a lazy article.